


imhêr

by bodysnatch3r



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Genderbending, HRBB14, hobbit reverse big bang 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:02:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2755433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>imhêr; to burn</p><p>she is forged in fire, like her siblings. she is a warrior, a king's daughter, a witch's child, a fighter, a princess, a queen.<br/>she is the one who walks out of the ash unscathed after the battle of azanulbizar. saviour, they call her.<br/>she is the last of her line, thorin dead, frerin dead, her grandfather gone, her father lost.<br/>she is blood-marked.</p><p><span class="small">Trigger Warnings: graphic description of pregnancies and birth, nsfw content.</span><br/>art & prompt by cloudsandflags.</p>
            </blockquote>





	imhêr

It is raining while the pains of labor take bitter abrupt hold of her mother, although they do not know it- the storm is outside, ravaging the mountain, tearing through her trees and her dirt and her wind, howling like a newborn pup demanding its milk. All they hear are its echoes: and it is the sound of voices within rocks, copies of copies of copies, changing in texture and form as they bounce off granite walls and columns, until they are nothing but a drumbeat or a heartbeat, distant, as unimportant as the winds they came from.

Mizimel curls her fingers, fists the new sheet already soaked with blood, howls, once more, the incenses and perfumes being burned unable to mask the shocking red of her muscles contracting, of a small body passing through hers towards the light. One of the midwives is chanting slowly, rhythmically, her throat vibrating with her invocations to the Smith: spoken in a language few know, few understand, what is said to be True Word, more ancient than Khuzdul, sister-language to the tongue of the Elves who never went West. The Moriquendi's is a star-language, stark and trilling and quick, the Dwarven tongue runs deep like veins of silver, it is a rumble, a cascade of boulders into a mine's ravine of darkness. Khuzdul and Quenya are a different matter entirely, they walk hand in hand despite their people's will, one the rock against which the Firstborn river crashes, a language made of bronze unwillingly paired with the other, a language made of sterling silver waves that rush and whisper, murmured.

Battle-cries sound bitter in all these tongues (ones that long for blood, ones that weep at the blood spilt)- but it is a different battle-cry entirely, the one ripped from the throat of the Crown Princess of Erebor as her hips spasm and she feels the tears kiss salt into her lips. She has done this twice before, and twice it has been painful, but this child is wrecking havoc, this blood-child born on a full moon with a storm outside, a hellfire of rain filling the lake below them's belly, bloating its waters, churning its waves into whirlpools, its icy calmness into screaming serpent.

“Push,”a young midwife whispers, wiping her forehead with a warm cloth, burning salve to keep her breathing steady. Mizimel screams in return, clenches her teeth and feels the blood as it spurts into her mouth from the small wound she's just accidentally opened in her lip. She swallows it down, rusty and sweet, as she throws her head back, screams again, and it is liberating beautiful primal- Mizimel moans the same way the stone moaned when it birthed the first Dwarves, a God's hands the midwife's, as it cracked and burned how her body is transforming itself and adapting itself right now, wrapping around the child that is moving through it. She knows she is crying as she pushes, because it is like gun-powder alit in her chest.

She knows it is as loud and as potent as any warrior's triumph.

“It is too much blood,” one of the dwarrowdams whispers, her hair and beard white with too many moons, glints of amethysts braided in her whiskers that shine like gems embedded in silver, her face a sea of wrinkles- she runs a worried hand over the faded blue tattoos on her chin and cheeks and bites her lip. “It is too much blood,” she whispers again, and sets new water to boil.

The child is fire, white hot like the forges inside every dwarven heart, but nonetheless still infinitely brighter than any will ever be able to imagine: they will try and hold it back, and with it the flame it bores, and they will fail, Mizimel knows suddenly- the misery it is tearing through her body as it fights to live is more than all the proof that is needed. Clay and dirt and earth molded into place by the ground and the rumble of lava (Mother's Skin, brown like Yavanna's hands, dark-eyed, green-haired, formless in her shadowy beauty and Father's Spit, red-hot like the tips of Aulë's fingers, white-blazing, ever-scorching), molded into flesh by the will of the cracks in the stone. When a third raven had come to Durin's Rookery a year before, they had seen it for what it was: a portent.

A feast was had, fires lit, runestones cast to read the fortunes. Mizimel had not asked the Memory-Keepers what Aulë had had to say about her pup, her third, the yet unborn child, and they had not answered. Two already had been marked with flame: not the slow steady burn of magma flowing, no- flame, _burning_ , like trees crackling and bending under dragon's breath and orcish blade. The Memory-Keepers had seen fire and she had not asked of what kind, had not asked how destructive, out of fear she had not asked a further explanation: their fates were set in stone and Mizimel knew far too well that the silver vein flows only towards one corner of the earth, the rock folds only right. There is no way to stop what is to come: better not know it, better keep it at bay with song and dance and bitter, quiet laughter.

Kurd'ursulher eldest had been named, Thorin in the much too rounded, much too plump letters of the Ground-Folk. Fire-heart.

A heavy name, a king's name, if the stones had spoken right- a warrior's name.

The second had been Frerin- Urzul Zundush, Fire-bird, light like laughter and morningsun's kiss, light like dust hanging in between pages of a library, like fingertips dirty with ink.

“ _Push_!” the midwives chant, in unison it seems (but the pain is clogging Mizimel's ears and her arteries, breathing is as difficult as how cleaning the blood-drenched sheets bunched under her body would be, if they were to be cleaned- but her blood is to go back to the Earth, a token of gratitude, a prayer of thanks. The stone will guard her child, that way. The stone already guards two, and she does not know if she is hearing correctly anymore, why she is thinking of bloodied sheets as her daughter- _daughter? How does she even know_? But she knows, Maker, she knows it will be a daughter. None of her boys ever fought this loudly for breath, none of her boys ever screamed their name so loudly through her aching hips. Her mind is a scramble of beauty and pain, her body a wretched exhausted work of art).

“I can see the head!” she thinks she can hear someone say or scream or yell or laugh?, Mahal it does not matter, Mahal _it never does_ in these moments.

Mahal, she is so tired. Mahal, _she is so tired_.

Her scream is a sob and a prayer so acute for a moment she fears she has driven herself deaf, because there is no more chanting, no more whispering, only the sound of her voice reaching shattering heights, and she does not know for how long she screams, all she knows is that one moment she is, _so loud_ , and then she is not. Then there is quiet.

The mother takes a breath, it feels like the first of a lifetime. The quiet crushes her iron ribs like a mace, and she pushes herself up, leans on her elbows, “ _Is the babe_ \--” she nearly howls, because there is much too much silence, and suddenly she is awash in terror.

The midwives do not answer.

A child's first scream does.

* * *

“Did you fight with the human noble's son?” her mother asks, wiping blood off her face with a pearly white handkerchief, Orocarni embroidery adorning it with blacks and golds: a tribute from merchants.

“No,” she lies, because her father is in the room also. She glances at him, reinforcing her guilt, but Thrain says nothing, just scoffs very quietly. Belkbaghudursul, Storm of Fire in honor of the tempest that baptized the day of her birth is the name that was given to her with the first prick of ink in her skin- two blue dots under her eyes. She wept when they gave them to her and her mother had held her tight, her vocal chords humming lullabies to calm her as the fire cast orange in her jewels. She had stopped squirming, but she had not stopped crying.

Mizimel was right.

There is flame in this black-haired child's fate.

“ _Dis_ -”

Her father's jaw spasms when Mizimel uses the name the Ground-Folk use for her- _daughter_ in the dwarf tongue, he despises it. It reduces his child to cattle, to another dog scrambling for food in the gutter, to nothing but the word used to describe her. But his child is so much more than a simple _word_ , she is a name roaring for its place in the world, tearing its way through the dark like her brothers'. Names are important- he may hate Dis and what it stands for, but he stands assured in the knowledge that his daughter's real name is protected. That no one aside from few chosen ones know of her umùran's name, the most precious of secrets, that few have the privilege of tussling her curls and calling her Belkba.

His wife glares at him and runs a hand through Dis' hair, sighs almost imperceptibly.

“Belkba, little one, you _swear_?”

“On the _Smith_ ,” Dis says, holding her head high, staring into her mother's eyes. Mizimel gives her a half smile, and it is then that Balin (her hair only beginning to show the faintest sign of grey) peeks her head into the room and clears her throat.

“My Lord?” she asks, and Thrain moves from the corner behind his daughter he was standing in, arms crossed. His furs trail behind him, his boots heavy and clinking with metal against the ground. “King Thranduil and Queen Elenathiel are here for the audience, my Lord.”

The scholar-general bows her head, and behind her Dis catches a glimpse of Frerin, who is holding what looks like parchment between his teeth as he balances books on his bent right knee which he is resting against the wall, and he pulls back his hair and ties it in a ponytail, stubbled cheeks sucked in and eyes narrowed as he concentrates on not having _A Brief Historie of Haradrim and Orocarni Hydromechanics_ topple to the floor and, deeming from the sheer weight and size of that book, drag him along with it. He manages to grab it just in time and hits his elbow against the wall in the process.

Dis quickly lowers her gaze and tries not to laugh. She has to stare at her mother's hands and the rings that adorn her calloused fingers and contort her face into an ugly grimace, but the very, _very_ unladylike snort escapes her mouth nonetheless. She hides her mouth in her palm. Her nose still aches from when the Ground-Folk boy grabbed her hair and slammed her against the pavement in the market district and she accidentally rams her palm into it a little too hard.

“ _Belkba_!” Mizimel exclaims when the blood starts pouring out if it again. Balin glances at the princess' bloodied shirt and trousers and her currently bleeding nose, rolls her eyes and then quickly bows her head.

“Your father and Thorin are waiting in the Hall of Kings, Lord Thrain.”

Thrain sighs, runs a hand over his eyes, presses the heels of his palms to them, “Has King Thranduil lamented the lack of sunlight yet?”

“Not that I've heard. But I do not doubt that he will. And quite soon, to add to that.”

Balin smirks and eyes Thrain from under her bushy eyebrows. Thrain sighs louder and marches past her, “Don't kill yourself with a book, Urzul, please.” he mutters, and Dis erupts in a loud fit of giggles.

“Will absolutely _not_ , Father, thank you for the input.” Frerin frantically mumbles past the paper still clenched in his teeth, before realizing he's drooling all over it, taking it out, wiping it on his pants and inspecting the teeth marks he's left in it. Balin frowns at him and lightly smacks him on the back of the head as she falls into step to follow Thrain, “put those down and meet us too, you're not excused from this.”

“ _But_ \--”

“The hydromechanics of our Orocarni cousins can wait. Your princely duties, however, _cannot_.”

As the door shuts closed behind them, Dis can hear her brother babble about the importance of hydromechanics, and how vital it is to a prince to know them, lest there be leaking all over the mountain, and dwindle away as the three turn a corner. Dis smiles at the tip of her boots, only to feel her mother's hand push her chin up so that they can look each other in the eye again.

“Show me that,” Mizimel whispers, cleaning the oozing blood off of her daughter's face. She runs her thumb along her split lip.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No more than I hurt him.”

“You broke his arm, you know.”

“He broke my nose.”

Mizimel eyes her daughter and sighs as she slips her dirty handkerchief back into her sleeve. She will bury it afterwards, a different sacrifice than the one the Dwarves of the West perform on the bloodied sheets of a newborn's mother: this ritual comes from the East, and speaks of spilt blood, screaming battles, and a Goddess of Death and Rebirth through flame. A Goddess with an Eye marked in the flesh of her throat.

A Goddess who speaks in Shadow.

There are few things Mizimel has kept of her land- there are few things she has passed on to her children.

The Bringer of Gifts is, for now, not one of them.

“But you are a king's daughter.”

“He started it,” Dis snarls, “said I had no place being with the boys. Said I should've kept my head down.”

“But you did not.”

The girl smirks, and her mother cannot understand whether it is a triumphant smirk or a bitter one- she has grown so fast, _too fast_. Mizimel blinked and the little girl in front of her had become a woman, proud and vicious and intelligent. It makes her heart ache with fear, sometimes, and with pride, most of the times.

“No, I did not.”

* * *

She hisses when the water seeps into open wounds and makes them sting. The steam kisses dried caked blood away, her clothes discarded on the floor in childish abandon. The waves of her hair cling to her neck and shoulders and back, braids either undone to wash the dirt or ripped apart by the earlier quarrel. She wipes her face clean and sighs for no reason at all at her own reflection and then scowls. The expression brings her thick eyebrows together in a definitely unsophisticated and unladylike expression and a strand of hair gets stuck to the bridge of her nose. She scrunches her nose and picks it off, tucking it back behind her ear.

The door opens and Dis catches a glimpse in her mirror of Balin's sister quickly glancing at her, blushing and closing the door halfway, staring at the floor, cheeks blazing.

“You can come in, Dwalin.”

“I didn't want to. To interfere. Or bother.”

“Is my father calling for me?”

“I heard about the scuffle. Wanted to check if you were all right.”

“Come braid my hair.”

She turns around, their eyes meet, Dis smiles. Dwalin's blush deepens and she buries her fingers in the other girl's hair after a moment of breathless hesitation, because despite being older than Dis' eldest brother she is love-sick and smitten like the biggest idiot there could ever be, and Dis is a smiling mess whenever she sees her, and she unties the knots, massages her scalp. Dis purrs, bends her head back.

“The silver clasps, please. My grandmother's.” she whispers, Dwalin's rough, agile fingers plating her hair into three separate braids and then braiding them together into one. Dwalin turns her around to face her again and runs her fingers along Dis' jaw, Dis leans into her touch and then grabs her hands. She runs her thumb along Dwalin's palm, traces a new rune etched into her wrist.

“This one is new.”

“Yes.”

Dis smiles and brings Dwalin's fingers up to her lips. When she kisses her fingertips, there is a second in which both of them know that anything could happen, they could fall within each other in a heartbeat. And Dis swears on the Smith she could lean forward and let their lips touch, Dis swears on her mother's desert gods she could set herself aflame and it would never match the fire inside her chest right now. She realizes exactly what she's done, Dwalin still feeling her breath against the skin of her hands, and the blush creeps up to Dis' cheeks too, and she pulls herself back, feels, for a moment, Dwalin's eyes flicker over her still bare chest- she covers herself, subtly, pulls up the fur wrapped around her hips. She smiles, this time strained, this time awkward, and licks her lips.

“Braid my beard too?” she asks to avoid thinking about kissing Dwalin, to avoid wanting her hands on her skin, thoughts that have been creeping in her head relentlessly.

She feels Dwalin's lips brush against her own, _oh mahal i am going to lose my mind_ when the shouting outside her room starts.

Dwalin pulls back, Dis pulls back, they swallow, the warrior stands, Dis quickly slips a shirt on, they avoid each other's gaze, and Dis feels her body burn, her hands ache, her legs on fire, the need roaring between them so loudly she fears she will never hear anything else again- and then, as clear as day, as crystal pristine as ice on a mountain lake, she hears her brother roar:

“He is _losing_ his _mind_!”

Dis stares at her hands with her chest suddenly ringing with a cavernous emptiness, all youthful want locked away somewhere where it's cold, because she knows who Thorin's yelling about, she knows it is Thror, and it scares her and it makes her so lost.

“I cannot– Maker, did you _see that_? He _antagonized_ Thranduil in front of _all of us_ , _humiliated him–_ ”

“I know, lad.”

Balin's voice is much lower, much quieter. Her worry does not become rage, her worry is heavy rain clouds, Dis feels Dwalin's hand give hers a little squeeze. She does not bother trying to smile.

“ _Why_ is no one doing anything, Balin? Why does no one _care_?”

“Because he is king.” Dis whispers under her breath in Balin's stead. When she swallows, she swallows diamond shards, gold blades, a mountain of treasure. The trinkets tear through her stomach and throat and lungs- for a moment she is drowning in bile.

For a lifetime she is drowning in blood.

* * *

She twirls her braid, she unties it, she keeps deadly quiet- she was born in blood and she was bloodied on her naming day, bloodied every step of the way, bloodied when she scraped her knees and bit her lips and caught her first mountain-shriek (a gagging, translucent little thing grabbed near the warm pools whose steam nurtures the mountain), bloodied when she had her first kiss, _bloodied_.

It is fitting, then, that on the day her heart begins to break she is covered in soot, ash and sweat.

She stares at the ground and she breathes because she is certain that at least breathing will keep her sane for a little while, long enough for her mind to not shatter, long enough for her to have the strength to draw the next breath, and then the other, and the one next, and maybe the other one too.

Stories are full of people just trying to breathe.

It is so strange to feel so numb.

“Eat.”

She tilts her head to the side: her dark eyes lack all spark, her smile lacks all energy, all laughter seen not heard- there is no laughter to hear anyway.

“Dwalin is worried. Eat.”

Thorin crouches in front of her, eyes her face she's keeping hidden beneath the unruly, dirty mess of her hair, which he pushes back: when it is his turn to smile it is a dead-tired smile.

“Is she the only one who's worried?”

Thorin just shrugs her question off his chest, ringing empty. His left cheek is bleeding, his knuckles are skinned, face battered, covered, like her, in soot.

“How's Frerin?” she then asks instead because it seems like the worst question to ask, and therefore its weight hurts her joints more than the rest. Thorin clenches his jaw. She cups her hands around the bowl of hot thin broth purely for its warmth: her stomach is closed off to the rest of the world, Thorin sits next to her uninvited. She doesn't mind, too much, doesn't mind an attempt to warm her coming from a brother trapped in the suffocating heavy frozen stone that are his princely duties and their grandfather's madness. A mother seen as an eastern witch, a devil-worshiper, an eye traced on the inside of her wrist to ward from evil.

“Will he see?”

The question makes her brother swallow hard, a boulder wedged in his throat not melting although his saliva is acid, his tears are acid- he stares at his hands because his sister's face will be too much.

“No.” he whispers- she swallows and focuses her gaze on the mountain burning far away, a spark between the forest and the lake.

“The stone will teach him.” she says, steadfast, and does not know if she is actually certain of it or simply allowing herself to be a hopeful child.

“Not all dwarves can-”

“The stone will teach him. The stone _has_ to teach him.”

Thorin knows she is staring at him, jaw set almost painfully, looking almost as much like their father as he does, and he dreads it, their little sister's courage: of all three, her fire is the one that burns the brightest.

“She _will_ teach him. She will. She will.”

It is clenching how quickly words become prayers, and tonight there are many of those that are being uttered to rock and stone and dark and dirt.

Mizimel's incense burns in their makeshift tent and fills the fabric with the smell of burning wood and honey.

“Have we not seen enough fire today?” her husband asks, so tired he does not know if he will ever let his youngest son's hand go. Frerin sleeps, eyes wrapped in ointment and bandages, face scabbed and tired. Thrain wipes a lock of hair out of Frerin's sweaty face, and Mizimel is quiet for a while.

“Zalafa will watch over him.”

“The Gods are _gone_ , Mizimel. They are not watching.”

She sits next to Frerin and threads her fingers with his hair, “Nonsense,” she whispers, her voice not at all like a queen's, not at all like a warrior's, “nonsense. They always watch.”

“Not tonight.”

“If Zalafa is not watching, then Khajimin wi-”

“Do _not_. Not here. Not now.”

“The _flame_ took his eyes.” she snaps, suddenly defensive, wary, hands curling in her lap like talons. But still, she whispers: there is no room for words said out loud in air so thick with heartbreak.

“Yes.”

“My children are all fire-born. My children do not have frost watching over them, they do not have your snow. They have flame.”

“Her name is ill-fortune.”

“How your people read Her name is not my concern.”

“ _My people_? They are yours too. _Your children_ are of _my people_.”

“ _But also of mine_. Do not forget that. Their skin is darker than the rest's.”

She cups Frerin's cheek tenderly, a jarring pause between her burning eyes and the sweet gesture that follows, runs a thumb along the edge of the bandages and wipes the sweat off his feverish brow.

“A prince's children or not, they are not allowed to forget that. We will never be allowed to forget that. Not here.”

She senses Thrain standing, pacing as he always does, hands clasped behind his back, and shuts her eyes.

“When I first came here they called me _witch_ , do you remember that?”

He sighs, “I do.”

“Said I was going to curse the mountain, said Erebor had no business mixing with the Orocarni,” she stands, strides over to one of the candles, stares into its flame, “How loudly do you think they will whisper, now that the mountain is gone?”

And her voice is not at all like a witch's.

She blows the candle out.

* * *

The darkness ends in quiet, and it is the most logical solution.

The black melts into cold water brushing along his forehead it is heavy, moist- a cloth wet with cool water to help bring his fever down, but the bit of his nerves that pick up the sensation are so different from everything else, from the skin brushing against his clothes to the flesh that picks up the rough cover he's sleeping under to the overwhelming feeling of his hair rooted to his scalp, that the cloth and the water suddenly become the entirety of his world, until the sound of the washbasin being put down replaces the weight of touch with the shining white spark of Orocarni china. And then the rustle of leaves, or is it the flaps of the tent being moved, low mumbling coming from his right. He becomes his mother's voice that tastes of brown and cinnamon and an elderly healer's, low in whispers of quick dwarven tongue.

“Frerin?” he then hears Mizimel ask.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to walk again?”

Too loud, _too loud_. The Stone is a welcoming mother and this he does not doubt and he has the proof of it always, but she screams her gift at him too loudly for him to be able to hear it clearly.

The last time he'd tried to listen, he'd howled when he had been filled to the brim with her beauty, howled and vomited all over his hands until he saw red in the darkness too because everything always all at once every breath every thought every footstep every blink every shift in the stone, every mouse teetering along the dust, every deer running through the forest, every collective scream of wounded consciousness his people now bear.

He shakes his head: his mother's sigh is as imperceptible as her shift in breathing.

“Would you like to try if I were here?”

A new voice, new color: gold. The sun, and he turns his head sharply because he hadn't heard her coming in.

“You're not wearing any shoes.”

“I was training.”

He grins and she smiles. Mizimel pulls back and stands next to the healer.

“You won't leave?” Frerin asks.

“No.” Dis replies.

He swallows.

“You promise?”

“Carve my heart and let the raven take me.”

She steps close to the bed and her brother leans forward and presses his palms to her face, and her smile widens. He smiles wider too, a large grin as his fingertips pick up the shape of her lips curving.

“Hello, you,” he mumbles, and his hands leave his sister's face and plunge in darkness again until they find her fingertips: concentric circles that he knows expand into her hand, her wrist, her arm, like a rock thrown into a lake, the echoes of its fall running along the water's surface, vibrations tracing the map of humidity and stone in darkness out of oblivion. There is no light, deep under the mountains. There is only quiet and blank canvases to paint on what you hear. Frerin hears the echo of the Stone like the thought of a stubbed toe or a burned hand before a blade cuts: the memory of pain and the perfect awareness of its nature and color and taste. He wants to crawl back beneath the covers, hide away, feel it all muffled through bedsheets and wood, vibrations unattainable and beautiful.

A world of darkness is so much better than that scream so loud, _so loud_. He is familiar with darkness now, she has been holding his hand for the months they have been traveling, seeking shelter.

“Urzul?” his mother asks, tentative, dubious. She bites her tongue immediately and curses herself for fretting. Frerin has his own rhythms, his own times. He follows his vein in the stone, not hers. No one else's, _just his_ : Mizimel forgets that often. Her vein runs through sand, and sand is quick to shift and move, sand overlaps and falls into waves and flows through hands. Sand is indomitable: stone is relentless.

There is a difference.

Dis shoots her a glance that goes beyond her years, shoots her a glance she knows means one and only one thing: _I know him best, leave him be. Leave him be. The stone knows me, the stone knows him. Let her do her work._

Mizimel bows her head and is aware her words are no longer necessary. Her children are grown. Her children will soon lead a people.

“Are you ready?” Dis asks. He is not: below him, around him, there is a chasm. The darkness is like rock slipping and crushing him. The darkness scares him. Frerin takes breaths as deep as they can go, the air filling his lungs and then moving into his stomach until, staying there, the breeze moves into his arms and legs, and there it calms his blood: the rush in his veins subsides until it is a usual, sluggish flow. Sensing Dis next to him makes this process so much easier, but the unknown still lingers like colours behind his dreams.

Frerin is so terrified.

His legs dangle over the edge of the bed. Dis notices that his feet are tense so that not a single bit of bare flesh is touching the ground, yet. She swallows, uneasy, as she stands, Frerin still sitting, his shoulders still hunched, his neck still tense. His eyes are still bandaged but she can see the scar tissue underneath the cloth, shining with ointment to ease the pain. She thinks of how travel isn't doing him any good. She thinks that Thror and Thrain are pushing them on, as far as they can from the mountain, as deep as they can from the fire. Frerin hasn't walked ever since the dragon-fire took his eyes: his pony has been guided by either her or Dwalin as they go, a sweet chestnut thing with tranquil black eyes, named Daffodils in the surface's tongue. A strange name, much too air-borne for their unaccustomed mouths, used to words cut from gems and gold, but pretty nonetheless.

His legs are thin, pale, his body has lost all muscle he'd built over years of grueling training. He knew more of the underground fungi that grew around the sulphuric pools beneath Erebor's Library than the fine art of holding a blade and not have it accidentally lop your own hand off, but he put equal effort in both, and always garnished everything with a smile, and all that has happened in the last months seems like such a _waste_ to Dis, such a foolish stupid waste of talent and brightness.

“ _As ready as I'll ever be_ ,” Frerin mumbles under his breath, one of his usual smiles (now tinged with inevitable bitterness and sadness) accompanying the words.

And then he stands.

It is like air being ripped out of his lungs and there is no blow to accuse or hide from, only the soles of his feet touching the ground, and the air is voices and sudden coloured wisps of smoke as if all were seen through melting glass. The chaos becomes sharper as he breathes, more painful and then it starts growing from the ground up, building through his ankles, galloping through his legs up to his stomach into his chest, an endless burning sensation as the echoes that the Stone holds tight against her breast explode inside of him suddenly, like electricity hitting a tree stump breaking it in half, like a sudden sound, and he _screams_ , Mahal he screams so loud when the fire reaches his throat and tears through his brain, when the tent they are in becomes sudden tangible reality as if the world had been thrown at him, a blow falling perfectly aimed at his head, a blow coming from within that he cannot avoid.

The Stone sings in all languages and in none. And he can hear them all.

Frerin staggers forward, his knees give out, the world follows him.

All he feels is the voice and the light and the world around him roaring its life into his body, the Stone finds her outlets in his racking, paper thin bones. It is as if his heartbeat has been torn from his chest and fed into his ears, as if everyone's heartbeat has been placed within him: a thing of such beauty he feels the bile burn his teeth and somewhere a mountain crumbles and the rocks landslide down his spine.

He can hear his mother breathing, thinking. He can feel the healer tut and clench her jaw, waiting. Marginally, far off, buried under layers and layers of screams, he can hear his own voice trying to draw breath in this oil-coated suffocating ocean of sensations. The skin is being torn off his bones and substituted with the world disintegrating around him and putting itself back into place within his skull and only his skull, _all of it_. But he does not want this, _he does not want this_ , there is a sound and he does not know if he recognizes it because it could be him or it could be his brother- it is him, curled up on the floor, hair matted to his forehead body on fire racking with tremors as he shrieks his throat raw, some dwarrowdam far away is crying cradling her stillborn son, an old storyteller thinks of the mountain they've lost, hidden deep within Mizimel's memories is hymns to a Goddess screaming as she bathes her hands in sacrificial blood and drinks it to her forgotten Master, and lastly there is the deep, forceful hum of Arda herself as she is sung into place and existence, the first stone is being woven into life by translucent tendrils of melody, an eternal overlap of teutonic plates dragging against each other and breaking apart.

He hears it all. He knows he will go mad, the infernal beauty of the song does not end at the mouth of Hell, does not stop dragging him towards sharp stones he knows his mind will break against.

Frerin sinks even deeper underwater.

Thorin and Thrain burst in, attracted by the screams, and Thrain gives Mizimel _a look_ she catches and she furrows her brow, clenches her jaw, brushes off his distrust by uttering her prayer to the Gift-Bringer a little louder. It is the healer that immediately stills Thorin from rushing to his siblings' side. He nearly elbows her in the ribs to tear himself out of her grasp nevertheless, but she shakes her head, stern, quiet. Thorin helplessly looks at Frerin screaming on the floor.

“ _Do something_!” he cries at Dis. She does not respond, crouched next to Frerin, her hair obscuring her face.

“Frerin!” she calls, unheard, or heard only as a whisper amongst the noise, “ _Frerin_!” she says again, louder, and then grabs her brother's hand.

There is a breath, _I'm here_ is her last coherent thought, _DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE_ is what he screams in her mind, Earth-shattering, and then Dis' back arches and she screams and her hair billows back as her neck snaps back too, her eyes wide.

The Stone kisses her.

This time it is Mizimel who grabs Thorin to hold him back and whispers the prayers she was uttering before into his ear, “ _Khajimin, my hands are bound. As I walk through the Halls of the Smith I bear Your name like golden mirth on my fingers. Khajimin Gift-Bringer look down upon us as you descend under cover of darkness, leading the dawn away from your breath, into New Light as you take the Souls of the Weary and place them to your Right, as you take the Blood of the Weary and place it to your Left. You have shielded me in Flame and I will fear no Darkness. Maker, take me by your Side as you mold the stone into world, Mahal hold my hand as I search for your glory in all things. Stone-Changer, show me the way as I am blind_. Repeat it. _Show me the way as I am blind_.”

Frerin's darkness burns brighter, hot but not as painful, white almost, the nerve endings seared for good, the flesh melting off the fingertips. When Dis explodes behind his teeth in a cascade of blue, he feels the hum grow louder, almost a scream.

Dis' vocal chords are vibrating so hard he knows they're going to snap if it all does not calm down.

With a scream of effort Frerin wills his body to move, grabs both sides of her face. She grabs his wrists instinctually.

He sees her as if she were made of glass, translucent, her core a beauty of burning ice: the image is sudden, startling, crisp in the chaotic sound. It leaves him gasping for air.

She sees him for a moment the same way he sees her: his umúrad wild wind blowing through the charred skin of his sternum, and then he is swallowed once more by the hum they are sharing. He is a blur of a vision, nothing more.

Instinct, though, sets in in between Frerin's eyes, and he knows suddenly how to catch the hum and tame it, now that it is less loud, now that it is shared he knows how to knot his fingers in its mane and hush it, delicately run a palm along its neck and listen and feel it panting. He looks around, still grasping at Dis' face and the screaming _has_ stopped, the humming is nothing but a slightly uncomfortable drone.

Frerin catches his breath, finally, sees his mother, his brother, his father. He can see the fabric of the tent around him because he can sense it as it brushes against the ground, the vibrations clawing their way up his spine into his brain.

Dis is shaking violently in his grasp: she is not used to the sound, even less than he is, and vision and Stone in her are different, two entirely separate things.

Slowly, despite the lingering fear of not being able to handle it if he does not share the load with someone, Frerin pries his wrists out of Dis' grasp.

Balin and Dwalin have come in, no doubt called by either Thorin or Thrain. The world is so different and so utterly the same: he sees it evanescent, like in a dream, colors waxing and waning or not there at all, objects blinking in and out of existence. The only clear thing are the beings, the breaths they take: plants with roots deeply set into the ground, rats scurrying along wood somewhere, his parents standing nearby, even the rock as it breathes, he can see the burning of every living thing connected to the earth carried through stone.

Dis crumbles to the floor. Frerin's mind remains stable. The murmur of voices is still there, but its beauty is no longer terrifying: the world is no longer immersed in fire, it is immersed in calming, stalling water. It's Fundin's youngest daughter who rushes over to catch her. He sits on his haunches, head tilted to the side. Frerin feels the sweat starting to ice his bones, is suddenly aware his hands are shaking.

He never thought Dis' mind could've snapped. He never thought she wouldn't have been able to handle the load, never thought something like this could have killed her, Mahal, it didn't even _cross his mind_ \--

Mizimel is the second to break away from the group. She crouches next to her daughter, runs her hands through her hair.

He distinctly hears her utter the words: “ _As I walk through the Halls of the Smith I bear Your name like golden mirth on my fingers_.” and shivers.

Dis stirs. She furrows her brow, eyes still closed, and then pushes herself upright, leaning against Dwalin. Her eyesight is blurry, her breathing labored. There is a slight trickle of blood falling from her nose into her mouth. She smiles and she wipes it off with the back of her hand.

“You're crying.”

“ _What_?” Dis whispers, because her eyes _are_ glistening but she hasn't made any sound, not a single sniffle, nor a sob. Nothing her brother could hear.

“You're crying,” Frerin repeats. He leans over to brush the hair from out of her eyes only to stop himself before their skin touches again. He flexes his hand and pulls it back, uncomfortable.

“Of course I'm _crying_ , you bloody oaf. You were in my _head_.”

“Not I. The Stone was.”

“Whatever. It still hurt more than Mahal's forges.”

She smiles at him and he smiles back. Dis rests her head against Dwalin's chest.

 _Thank you_ , Frerin thinks as loud as he can as he watches his little sister stand with difficulty, leaning over to breathe as she does. Her head is spinning.

Dis glances at him.

 _You're welcome, you bumbling idiot_ he clearly hears in his head.

His lips quip into a smile. Frerin lets the vibrations of her footsteps as she walks out, helped by Dwalin, wash over him.

* * *

“Belkba, stand down.”

She clenches her jaw and her hands.

“ _No_.”

“Belkba, you cannot-”

“ _You_ _cannot stop me_ , Grandfather.”

Thror sighs, hands his shield back into the hands of his esquire, and then pulls back, squares his granddaughter head to toe. Her usual skirt has been substituted by leather trousers, there are rosary pearls (her mother's) tucked in her belt, there are charms woven in her braid. She only lacks the warpaint, and then she looks like the perfect copy of the Orocarni guards who escorted Mizimel to Erebor a million years before. Thror blinks at her, at the silver ring in her nose, her curls tamed and pulled back, swept off her face. There are no intricate braids in her hair, he notices: just one.

Something tells Thror it won't be long until she will mix charcoal and water and trace her body with it.

He shakes his head, scoffs and turns around.

“ _Grandfather_.” she snarls and blocks his way to his shield. “I will _fight_.”

“You will remain _here_ , with your mother, _where it is safe_.”

“What does my father say of this? _My brothers_?”

She plants both hands on either sides of the poles that work as entrance, blocking the way completely. The boy is still holding Thror's shield, and he glances apologetically at his king from behind Dis' shoulders. Thror just shrugs.

“Come back later, Dirthin.”

The page quickly bows and disappears with the shield, his light armor rattling as he walks. Dis hears this, staring at her grandfather square in the face. Her black eyes are a storm, and blinking is her only movement. Her chest is rising and falling rapidly with her breathing, her rage seething, staining black in his grandfather's pale blue eyes.

“ _Dwalin fights_.”

“It is not about you being a woman.”

“Then _what is it_?”

“It is about keeping you safe.”

“I can keep _myself safe_ , Grandfather. I _want this_.”

“You will _prove yourself another time_ , Belkbaghudursul.”

He uses her full name.

She stares at him for a last second, and then blinks down, lowers her arms, swallows the tears.

“They are my people too.” she whispers.

“You are still so young, Belkba-darling.” Thrain cups her cheek in one of his hands. “And you are still so strong.”

He delicately eases her face up so that he can look at her. He smiles. She pulls back, burning still, pushes his hand away, shoves Dirthin aside as she rushes by. Around her, the dwarves let her pass, carrying weapons and armor and rations. She knows her braid comes undone as she gathers speed. She knows her grandfather calls after her, but she does not stop. She does not stop until she reaches her tent, until she is alone in her darkness, until she can still her chest, it is heaving so hard. It takes her a moment. It takes her a while.

Outside, the sound of people preparing for war is vibrant, clear. She wonders how the rocks of Moria feel under Frerin's feet, how different they must be to other lands' softer soil. How merciless they will be.

Dis grabs her knives and starts sharpening them in the darkness, not a flame lit, using only the light that comes from outside, her brow furrowed, her mouth dry. Her movements are quick, brisk, precise. She knows the shape of the metal the same way she knows the shape and creases of her own heart.

A blade of light traces itself suddenly on the wall in front of her. Dwalin's silhouette is holding the tent open.

“Your grandfather is right.”

“I will not hide in the shadows as my kin sets out to _die_ , Dwalin.”

“Not all of us have to fight.”

Dis turns to face her, grasps her knives, fists clenched along the sides of her body. But her lips aren't snarling, her teeth aren't bared. She is no longer seething.

All she is is tired.

“Everything we have done has led to this. All of my grandfather's battles, all of my father's pain, all of Thorin's anguish-”

“Then let _them_ go. Let them fight.”

“I would never be able to forgive myself.”

“ _Belkba_ ,” Dwalin pleads, stepping forward with the kindness of a midnight snowfall, and she rests her hand on Dis' cheek. Dis does not lean into the touch but neither does she move away.

They are not lovers, but they have danced their thoughts along each other's backs so often that they both know they will never be able to be anything _but_ lovers, whatever happens.

“Let me fight, Dwalin.”

“I would not be able to bear a lifetime without you.”

 _Love_ is a word that is difficult to speak when every breath is heavy and reeking with the stench of death.

“Does _my_ lifetime not count? What if you fall and _I_ am left alone? What if you _all_ fall, and all I am left with is the dust and the bones and the guilt?”

Dis leans her forehead against Dwalin's. and she is running a thumb along her cheekbone.

“I do not fear the Orcs. Let them come, let them _come_ , Mahal, and take us both if it means I will not have to spend the rest of my winters without you.”

Balin clears her throat.

The two girls abruptly break apart, Dis looks away, Dwalin stares at her sister, bewildered. Balin furrows her brow at the fact that Dis is wearing armor, at the fact she is carrying her daggers, her hair is braided simply.

“Father wants to see us both, Dwalin.” she says dryly, her forehead creased, her eyes lacking their usual kindness, their usual malleability. Today the shadows of war are clinging deep to her heart. Dwalin swallows and follows her sister outside. Balin's eyes do not leave Dis' hunched shoulders or averting eyes.

When Dwalin is out of earshot Balin whispers: “Do not do this, Little One.”

“Sooner or later, the Orcs will come for us all. I will not hide.”

“ _Do not do this_.”

She leaves and the tent plunges back into darkness. Dis runs a hand along her sizzling ice-cold arms and curses herself for grasping so tightly at whatever it is Dwalin gives her, never asking or searching for more. And now they are here. Now they do not know if they will survive the night and she wants to tear her heart out, wants to scream, wants to rush after her and kiss her, promise her through the blood of their teeth awkwardly clashing that she will _not let go_ , she will not let go.

She is holding onto so many hands she is scared of letting even a finger slip.

Mizimel is burning wood: the smell fills her tent and embraces Dis the moment she steps in. Her mother's fingertips are dirty with rich dirt, coal dust and spittle, black paste she is mixing in a bowl.

“Come here, child,” she says, without looking up from her work. Dis walks up to her mother and crouches across from her, the fire between them. Mizimel's eyes shine when she smiles at her, framed by crow feet and hair that is starting to grey ever slightly. She stains her index finger and traces three lines on Dis' face: two starting just above her eyebrows running to her jawline and one from her lower lip to her chin (the coal tastes like sand in her mouth).

She leans back to admire her her daughter.

“Fit for a queen.” she murmurs, and cocks her head to the side.

“You aren't going to try and stop me?”

Mizimel wipes her hands and lays a blade onto the fire, sparks escape the coals and climb aimlessly into the air, towards the snow that has started to fall, searching for it but not finding it, trapped by the same animal skins that are keeping the two dwarrowdams safe and warm.

“Is there any point in trying to stop you, Little Flame?”

Dis lowers her gaze but her mother asks for her to look up, and Dis cannot refuse her mother this. Mizimel is a force to be reckoned with, kind but biting, hidden underneath layers of love like a snake hiding within sand. Her goddess is merciless and so is she.

But Maker, she is also so full of love.

Mizimel grasps her daughter's wrists with such reverential kindness that suddenly all Belkba wants to do is hide in her arms, hide from the battle, hide until the orcs and goblins come crashing down to tear them all to pieces, but at least she'd die safe, at least she'd die warm, at least she'd die with prayers to the Blood Goddess and the Smith whispered in her ears.

The war be damned, and Dwalin, and the orcs, and her grandfather's madness and blood honor-spilt.

“Must it be done in blood?”

Mizimel nods, the knife now in her hand. She traces her index along the tendons of her daughter's left wrist: her only daughter, the last of her line, whose womb is destined to produce an heir, whose children will be marked by dragon-sickness, whose fire must never be put out, must always burn. The last of a line of secret keepers who knows nothing of the tales she must tell. Her blood is rare, precious desert rain and ice-cold mountain stream, and both scald and boil and bubble in her veins.

It is a tiring thing, to try and escape blood. It follows you. It hounds you.

“It is a ward. Through blood is the only way She listens.”

It always finds you.

Mizimel speaks softly, like a person who is already in mourning, and pats Dis' cheek. The girl nervously shifts her position and tucks her legs under her body, which is when she notices the runestones next to the basin of warm water, next to their feet, one bare, tattoos swirling across them, the others booted in light leather, apt for moving around with speed in the chaos of close combat.

“What did you see?” the daughter asks the mother, and all the mother does is sharpen her knife as an answer. The movement is sister to Dis' but not twin: slow, calculated, done with the care and the love of someone caressing an old friend, done to keep hands from shaking, to keep others from seeing the tremor. Its blade is obsidian, its hilt is ivory and gold: this is a dagger never used for battle. This is a dagger used for ceremony and sacrifice.

“Nothing,” Mizimel whispers.

“ _Amad_.” Dis says, stern despite herself. “Amad.”

“I saw nothing.”

“You _lie_.”

The smile Mizimel gives her daughter is cold, unfeeling and lonely.

“I am a _witch_. Witches lie all the time.”

“Who dies?”

“ _Belkba_.”

“Who _dies_ , Mother?”

There is urgency in her daughter's tone and _Mahal_ she wishes there weren't, _Mahal she wishes she were still a child_.

“ _Which one of us dies_?”

Mizimel sets the knife down. She stares at the flames, then at her daughter. Dis swallows and when she looks into her mother's eyes she sees there is no way she will be able to get a straightforward answer.

“We cannot change it, and you know it. None of us can. We can see it, but we cannot change it. I wish I could. There are _so many things_ I wish I could change, Belkba, so may things of the past and the present and the future. But we are stone, forced to endure. We cannot stop the avalanches from tearing our bodies apart.”

Mizimel outstretches her hand, “Give me your wrist, Belkba.”

The blood drips in the shape of an eye just like hers. The blood drips and seeps into the rug, stains the water. A black bandage covers the wounds.

There is no running from the battle now.

Mizimel presses her lips to her daughter's forehead.

The wolves demand their share of flesh.

* * *

The battle begins with the thunderclap of fire, and burns its way across the gates of Azanulbizar like black smoke rolling off hills, like ants swarming, like insects devouring a carcass, like death falling from above.

Dis turns sharply, hides her face when her grandfather rushes by, her hair escaping her braid and falling across her bloodied forehead. She parries an orcish blade with one of her daggers, screams in effort as she thrusts the other one into the monster's belly and drags it upwards, towards their lungs. The orc hisses and falls forward, entrails dripping onto Dis' hands.

She takes a step back, and her head snaps to the side when the orc lashes out with their claws, deep gashes on her cheek disrupting the war paint. Her blood stings. Her own blood stings.

She throws herself forward, her knife buried into the orc's neck, the two of them falling.

Dis loses her grip on the dagger and tears it through the flesh, a fountain of black orcish blood mixing with her own pouring down her neck. She feels the pain of her knees scraping against rock and manages to stop from falling down the cliff. She wills herself to stand.

“ _Dis_!” a familiar voice calls, and she turns only to see Dwalin throwing one of her axes. It misses Dis' head narrowly and embeds itself in the skull of the orc who was about to bring their mace down upon her back. Dwalin's mohawk is dirty with blood and soot, her eyes bewildered.

“You _promised_!” she yells, running towards the other girl. For a moment Belkba thinks she will hit her, but Fundin's daughter only retrieves her weapon, pulling it out with a grunt, splattering them both with grey matter and bits of skull. Dwalin grabs the back of Dis' head and brings their foreheads together, “Don't die. Don't you _dare_.” and then she's back into the heart of the frenzy, axes rotating above her head. Dis stares at her go before hearing labored wheezing behind her and turning sharply, her daggers slashing across an orc's face. The orc parries her second blow and grabs her by the neck, pulling her up off the ground. Dis screams and brings her knees together up to her chest, kicks the orc in the face once, twice, until they let go of her, throwing her over their head with a roar, slamming her to the ground.

The air is knocked out of her lungs and she sees the orc stand above her, their sword ready to bury itself in her face. Dis helplessly scrambles for her dagger. Three arrows hit the orc square in the chest and they fall forwards: she rolls to the side before she's crushed and finds her brother's gloved hand outstretched to help her stand.

Frerin's feet are bloodied and bare. There is a cut above his left eyebrow, pouring blood into his milky white eyes.

“Father'll kill you when he finds out.”

He grins despite the chaos around them and then he's cocking another arrow and sending it flying. More of an elf than a dwarf in his movements, taught by their mother, he turns around and yells, “ _Stay close_!” to his sister, who's immediately pressing her back to his. He slings his bow to his back and unsheathes a dwarven sword, heavy. He sweeps it through the air, decapitating a smaller orc in the process, bares his teeth. His feet feel every vibration, every scream, his skin hears every sound, his spine sees every droplet of blood. He lunges forward and embeds the blade into a chest, throws his head back to avoid the spurt of blood.

Dis knows her hands are shaking- this is her first battle that wasn't a skirmish with bandits, her first war, her first time her eyes are filled with death and nothing else, and it is Frerin's also. They turn in unison, though, Frerin sensing her movements a moment earlier, Dis feeling her brother's thoughts a fraction of a moment before they happen; they never speak of this, neither between themselves nor to others: ever since they were within each other's minds they just _know_ , sometimes, what the other is thinking and when the other is feeling pain. It happens when their hearts are weary and their bodies tired, when it feels like they are screaming at a sky full of stars that does not care or need to answer.

They've managed to drag the fighting up to a high point: their backs to a precipice, snarling and hacking their way through orcs. Blood blossoms on Dis' blouse, somewhere under her right breast.

Frerin catches a glimpse of a large orc barreling towards them and grabs his sister by the arm, pushing her aside.

It takes Dis a moment to realize what is happening. She screams her brother's name but he moves a moment too slow, and the orc collides with his chest, running blindly towards the edge of the cliff.

Frerin screams as Dis runs, he tells her to stop, but before the message registers she is pouncing, she is burying her knives in the orc's neck, howling. The orc stumbles and throws the two siblings off of themselves. Dis' back hits a boulder and she feels the wind knocked out of her lungs.

She screams in pain.

And then comes Frerin's pain, searing red hot through her. She looks up and sees her brother grasping for purchase at the edge of the outcrop as he buries his hands into the stone, his nails breaking. He looks up and sees her and knows immediately what she is about to do and he yells, louder, because his gloves are torn and she'll touch him and she will feel _everything_ and he does not want that to happen, cannot subject her to so much pain.

Dis desperately tears herself a way through the orcs to her brother.

“DIS! _NO_!”

But her hand is already grasping onto Frerin's, and their flesh is touching, and suddenly Dis is screaming, screaming, _screaming_.

The pain of Frerin's broken leg and the gash over his eye and her own cuts in her face and she feels the fire burn through her, the fire of battle, of war, the fire they share, the fire Khajimin gifted them all.

Belkba grabs her brother's arm with her free hand, tears mixing with the dirt, the paint, the blood, the sweat.

His left wrist is bandaged in black the same way hers is.

“ _I'm not letting go_!” Dis yells.

“You'll have to!” Frerin screams back, voice hoarse, his knuckles bleeding. Dis can feel his weight beginning to drag her through the fire and the writhing of Frerin's ache: he can feel it too.

“I'll kill us both!”

“I'm not letting go!”

“I'll kill us both! Let me go! _Let me go_ , Dis!”

“No!”

He stares at her, her knees bent, her back arched with the effort, her feet slipping and sliding as they try to keep their purchase on stone sleek with blood, both red and black, as she tries to maintain her grip.

“ _Frerin_!”

He swallows, resolute, as Dis tries to pull back again, tries to drag him back onto the ground. He looks beyond her shoulder for a fraction of an instant and then back at her, and this time his eyes would be brimming with tears if dragon fire hadn't taken that from him.

“Let me go, Dis.”

“No! No! _I can't_!”

“Let me _go_!”

She screams, a wordless sound, someone grabs Dis by the shoulders. She doesn't stop to turn and see who it is, only fights back, kicks, hard, but they don't let go, hold onto her with icy grip of steel. A desperate grip, grimy nails burying themselves into her vest.

Frerin lets go.

His presence is torn from her mind as if she were being thrown naked into freezing water. Her brother's instincts make him rake his nails up to the quick against the rock as he slips back.

And then he is gone.

Thorin's arms pin his sister's to her sides, she throws herself forward howling, her hair billowing over her face. For a moment the war is gone, the battle is gone, for a moment there are only her cries as she tries to claw at Thorin's arms, as she heaves again and again and meets only air.

Thorin swallows the knot in his chest and pulls her back away from the edge.

She screams at him, sobbing so loud her throat hurts. She manages to free a hand and tries to lash out at him. She is crying. He is crying too. He would never admit it, but he is crying too.

“DIS!” Thorin yells, voice cracked like stone, and turns her, grabs her face. The cloth of the bandage on his left wrist stings her skin, scratches against open wounds.

“Father is gone!”

Dis stares at him, and maybe her mind protects itself from the truth because, honest to the Smith, she does not _understand_ at first, at first what Thorin says sounds like garbled mess, an animalistic roar, not actual words, not an actual phrase.

Her eyes dart from one corner of her eldest brother's face to the other and then she asks, “ _What_?”

“Father is _gone_. He led a group after the Pale Orc. I lost him in the battle he--” and his eyes glance over her shoulder to the emptiness where Frerin just let himself fall, “he's _gone_.”

And then: “Go back to camp.”

“No.”

“We are _losing_. Go back to camp, gather the women. The children. Get them out of here. We are _losing_ , Belkba, they are too many. We will all be dead before the sun rises. Save as many as you can.”

He lets go of her face and turns.

“Thorin, I'm not leaving you.”

“I can _buy you time_. Long enough for you to make it down, long enough so you can reach the tents.”

“No.”

He roars in frustration and turns again.

“Belkba!”

“I am not leaving you here to _die_!”

He grabs her and roughly shoves her to the side: there is a path that leads away from the fighting, a shortcut too narrow for orcs to storm through, it curves towards the east. She is small and nimble, still so young. She might make it through.

“GO!”

“ _No_!”

Her shoulder hurts where Thorin pressed his fingers to push.

The orcs are prowling, climbing up the rock towards them. Thorin glances at the spiteful hateful mass and then back at his sister. His sword is grasped tightly.

“You are the last of our line. You are the _last of our line_. Durin's blood dies with you.”

“Don't make me do this, Thorin.”

“I will not stand and watch while you _die_!” he grabs a rock, throws it at her. It misses her but hits the stone right next to her. Dis flinches, her ribs hurting. She looks up at Thorin, her eyes full of hurt.

“GO! DIS! _LEAVE_!”

She hesitates. He grabs another rock and throws it, “LEAVE!”, this time his voice breaking for good.

The first orc reaches them. Thorin buries his sword in their chest, and then there are few words left for any goodbyes there could be.

Dis turns and starts running. She is halfway down the slope, the sounds of Thorin fighting now mixing with the rest of the ongoing battle, when she hears the roar.

It is loud.

It is terrible.

It is a roar that could only mean one thing: victory.

And not for them.

Dis stops in her tracks.

What she sees is Azog the Defiler standing, terrible, terrifying, grasping her grandfather's severed head high above the battle.

What happens afterwards is madness.

What happens afterwards is a frenzy.

Dwalin sees her stop, stare, her eyes wide with horror. Dwalin sees her throw herself forward, and before she can stop her, before she can even _think_ of reaching her, she sees Belkbaghudursul throw herself at the Pale Orc. The orc's mace rotates in the air, comes down. Dis slips and falls backwards and does not hear Dwalin desperately call her name because her eyes are burning with righteous fury and for a moment Durin breathes through her, Durin _is_ her.

She grabs a branch from a dead tree nearby, an oak, uses it to shield herself.

The thud of heavy weapon against frail wood is evident, her hand vibrates.

She lashes out with her sword. She lashes out with her soul, with her rage, with her pain.

Azog has taken everything from her.

Her left dagger slices through Azog's hand as if it were butter, as if it were a twig, as if it were dreams or darkness or smoke.

The orc screams and she screams with it. Azog stumbles back, Azog wails, Azog falls. The orcs fall back with their leader: as they drag the sobbing beast back into the darkness of Moria, Dis is screaming, brandishing her newfound shield.

Those few orcs that do not manage to escape are slaughtered.

And when she looks up, the Pale Orc's blood on her hands and between her teeth and on her face and the oaken branch still clenched so hard her knuckles are white she realizes they have won, they have won even though her eyes are full of tears and it is difficult to breathe.

And when she looks up there is bloody, weeping quiet on the battlefield, and there is someone calling her name.

 _Queen_ , they are hailing her, _Queen_.

They are bowing, in the stillness of air that follows the war. The dwarves around her, bleeding and battered, are bowing.

She looks for Dwalin, for guidance, standing tired and alone in the midst of praise and heartbreak, but Dwalin has sunk to her knees too, and Balin with her, and Dis knows her grip on her dagger has faltered, the branch has fallen to her feet.

 _Melhekinh_ they are calling.

 _Queen_.

* * *

She stares at herself in the basin, hands planted on either side of it, her reflection a tremble on the surface of the water. It is evanescent and not-there, and it is how she feels right now. It is what she is right now.

A ghost of a ghost of a ghost.

There is an emptiness so deep it fills her every limb, it feels like bugs infesting her blood vessels: Dis slams her fists against the wood once, twice, three times, until the wood starts splintering, until her already torn knuckles start bleeding again. She does it so many times by the end the water has spilled and she is curled on the ground and she is cradling her hands, and maybe she is crying, but Mahal she cannot tell, there is so much inside of her right now it feels almost useless to cry.

When Dwalin walks in she walks in with footsteps delicate. She has taken her armor off, cleaned the blood from her skin, a healer has bandaged her wounds. Her eyes are puffy and red. She stands still, for the moment: it is up to Dis to decide if she wants to take her hand. When Dis looks up at her standing there they stare at each other, a single candle burns and elongates their shadows until they look like Children of Iluvatar dancing on reality's edge, not shrouded in twin light but in thick, dark drying blood. Dis wants to scream– alone or at Dwalin, it doesn't really matter. All she needs is to actually _do it_ , scream until her chest shatters and so does her mind, into a thousand shards that she can bury her hands in and let them cut her, dig through the broken bones and flesh until she can find her family again. She wants to leap up and fling herself at Dwalin if it will mean getting her brothers back, her father back, her grandfather, if pounding her fists against her chest until they break into a bloodied worthless mess will give them back then she will welcome her fingers into becoming so mangled she will never be able to hold a dagger, ever again.

If destroying herself will bring them back, then she would gladly burn herself on the pyre.

Instead she says: “They're gone.” as if that would fill the emptiness.

And Dwalin answers: “I know.”

“Hold me?”

Dwalin's forehead rests against Dis' left temple, her arms around her shoulders. Dis grabs her and holds as tight as she can, feels Dwalin's arms envelope her and squeeze almost as if she wanted to crush Dis' soul torn into four back into shape. Dwalin presses a kiss to her temple.

“They're _gone_ ,” Dis repeats, and she says it again and again and again, and every time Dwalin croaks back “I _know_.” which actually means “It is not your fault, Mahal it is not your fault, _my little storm_ ,” and when Dis' tears start falling again, like acid on her skin, Dwalin turns her head delicately.

She says it, word by word, _my little storm_ dwindled down to a whisper.

“And I am sorry I was not there to save them for you.”

 _Not even Frerin is left. Not even his joyous laughter_.

The pain escapes in size the word itself: whatever Dis is feeling cannot be constrained within four simple letters, p-a-i-n, it is unbearable inescapable unavoidable so heavily violently _there_ nothing can ever quench it and she knows that this, _this_ , is not the pain she is accustomed to, this is bigger than a mountain, bigger than the earth itself. The sobs she has been holding inside suddenly kick down the door to her vocal chords: she starts crying, hard, deep gulping breaths that end in a monotone moan that rasps at her throat, Dwalin's hands now on both sides of her face.

Both of them weep: Dis loud, in the deep parts of her anguish, as loud as she can, the sobs slowly falling into each other into a single cry, Dwalin quietly, her lips quivering, cradling the younger girl.

“Do not leave me,” Dis begs.

“Never.”

“Do not go,” and then she's pressing her mouth to the soldier's, “ _do not go do not go do not go_ ,” grabbing her hands and holding them tight, “stay with me tonight.”

 _Do not leave me alone with my ghosts_.

Dwalin's breath against Dis' lips and then she dips her head forward again, she cannot tell whose tears are whose. Dis wishes she could scream but this will have to do, this will have to tear her apart instead. And she breaks, with every kiss she breaks, she breaks with every memory that resurfaces whenever her mind isn't filled by Dwalin's lips and her skin and the warmth of her tongue, every breath taken where she isn't drowning her mind within Dwalin's eyes is pure lacerating agony, she breaks when Dwalin's hands find her hips, when they stand and tumble into the furs that cover her bed, she breaks as Dwalin wrestles with her corset's lacing, she burns when Dwalin's mouth finds her nipples, when she flicks and nibbles and licks.

Dis arches her back but there is no beauty in the pleasure: _I am alive and so are you and they are all dead, do not go, do not go, Mahal do not leave me_.

Dwalin slips out of her leathers and Dis rests her open palms against her bandaged ribs: the red is still blossoming, but most of it is brown, dried. She runs her fingertips along the the wound that tears through Dwalin's face and then kisses it as Dwalin's hands fumble with her trousers, her lips shaking against the stitches, she kicks her pants off and Dwalin does the same.

They are naked, they are bare-- Dis' dark skin against Dwalin's lighter skin and Dwalin pushes her back onto the pillows, rests her forehead against Dis'. Dis' hands find her breasts and Dwalin's throat hums with unspilled tears when she brushes her fingertips against her skin.

“If you had died today I do not know what I would have done.”

“I should have died with them.”

Dwalin silences her with a kiss, forceful and desperate, sloppy and matted with tears. Their skin is an aching mess of scratches and bruises, Dwalin moves down to Dis' neck, and Dis grabs the back of Dwalin's head, stares at the darkness above them as the guard moves lower still. She gasps when Dwalin's lips trace past her breasts, down her stomach.

She grasps the fur between her fingers when Dwalin's tongue runs along the inside of her thighs and knows she is shaking.

Dis hopes she will disappear within her own feeling, let it be agony or pleasure. Dis hopes it will burn her hard enough and bright enough to devastate her, destroy her, annul her. She cannot think of survival tonight, she cannot think of the days that will come, she cannot think of her family gone. Her mind will devour itself if she does. When Dwalin's tongue runs along her outer lips she moans, and she knows she will fall apart either way. She spreads her legs wider.

The feeling starts from the bottom of her belly, from between her legs, Dwalin's mouth against her, licking, sleek, _I am not the first girl she has had_ she thinks (nor is Dwalin hers). Dis moans, pushes her hips towards the other's mouth. Dwalin works faster now, her hands grab her hips and hold her in place because Dis starts writhing under the wetness of her tongue as it laps and moves inside of her, her skin a mess of tremors and of goosebumps. The sensation grabs her mind and tears it gradually to pieces: the pleasure grows and so does the ache in her chest, the cold shard that is stuck there and she wants to tear out, whatever the means, no matter how much blood she spills do to so.

“ _Harder_.” she whispers in hopes of the heat between her legs to snuff the ice out: when Dwalin substitutes her tongue with her fingers it tears through her, breaks her across the spine. She wails, her back arching to meet the hands moving inside of her. Dwalin's thumb finds her clitoris and Dis's hand rushes up to press her harder against her. Dwalin moves her hand away and starts grinding her hips against her, Dis kisses her and tastes herself.

She is falling apart, she is falling to pieces, Dwalin's hips pressed against hers, her clitoris aflame as she latches her feet around them and pulls her as close as she can: they rub against each other and Dwalin's breath becomes more ragged, gradually, as Dis starts moaning loud, her heart beating too hard.

The pleasure coils down onto itself and Dwalin's moving fast, now, Dis moaning with every movement. Dwalin's fingers find her again and she welcomes them, she clumsily slithers a finger inside of Dwalin in return. The older girl sighs and bends her head slightly back when Dis pushes herself inside of her and starts moving. It is less smooth than what Dwalin is doing to her, but this is Dis' first time she touches and is not touched. Dwalin is surprisingly easy to touch, delicate even.

Dwalin matches the circles she is tracing on her clit with her fingers' thrusts and the river breaks inside of her: Dis abruptly stops moving her hand and widens her eyes and she moans freely now, the pleasure flowing over her and augmenting the pain of the loss that is devouring her so much she starts screaming, loud, as Dwalin's fingers move swiftly inside of her and she is both climbing and falling and dirtying her hands with blood over and over. She feels herself start spasming around Dwalin, she feels the coil in her stomach give, she feels herself start to come, it fills her ears with static, it makes her moan loud and ugly, it makes her scream because Dwalin does not stop, Dwalin grabs the already aching sharp peak of pleasure and turns it into something more, something devastating.

Dis arches her back and she is screaming, _Mahal she is screaming_ as the orgasm devours her and Dwalin's lips find her one last time and lick and suck and she is sweating and she is crying when it reaches its zenith, like a merciless sun it envelopes her completely, like the broken soul she is she grabs Dwalin's head and pushes herself up against her, she sobs, she doesn't know if it is the pleasure or the pain, she doesn't know if she has lost herself enough because the pain is still there but something else is eating away at her too, she knows it is loss but she does not want to give it a name.

She screams Dwalin's name instead because it is the only word keeping her sane.

As she comes, Dwalin slips two fingers into herself and moves up Dis' body, until she kisses her and moans into Dis' ear as she works herself into labored breathing: Dwalin comes quietly, her body tensing suddenly as Dis is still trying to teach herself how to breathe again. Dwalin lets herself fall on top of Dis and Dis wraps her arms around her.

Dis can hear her own sobs but she is not aware she is crying, her mind is a soundless scream: _they're gone_ it is howling and _Aule I would not be alive if she were dead_.

Fucking did not fix a single thing. For a moment Dis was gone and there was only sensation, but it takes the same length of a moment and she is crashing back down within reality, within their absence, within the fact that there is no going back, there is no fixing this, there is nothing that can be done.

“I love you,” she whispers as she brushes Dwalin's sweaty mohawk out of her eyes. Dis' voice is broken by all the tears she has cried.

“ **Zâyungi zu** **,** ” the older dwarf whispers back.

Spoken in those words, it is a promise. Spoken in that tongue, it is an oath.

But when Dis blows the candle out she is still empty, and she does not know if anything will ever be able to fill it.

* * *

They burn the bodies.

There is no time to bury them.

There are too many to bury.

Mizimel clutches beads made of bone and her head is wrapped in a black veil, her hair is shorn, only her eyes can be seen, and they are watery and clouded and not letting a single tear spill past her lashes. Her daughter stands next to her, her shoulders tight.

They are still calling her queen despite the fact that she is not their ruler: by right, her mother is. But they would sooner have a child than a witch lead them, it seems, although her mother is not one and only her goddess is, the mother of wolves and of dragons.

They will have to move soon: the battle might have wrecked both them and the orcs, but the orcs will regroup and most of their men have fallen. They will head to the Blue Mountains, and Dis will have no pony to lead.

They did not find Thrain's body. Frerin was lying at an angle too twisted to be natural, his back snapped, his chest pierced with ribs. Thorin had been found still breathing: he had died during the night, while Dis had been curled in Dwalin's arms. He had already been dead in her mind and their mother's and the healers': he had not opened his eyes, not even once; it had only taken him a little more time than the rest to find the Halls of the Maker. Mizimel had sat holding his hand and praying until his pulse had trickled into silence, until the sun had started to rise.

On the pyre, the two brothers are side by side.

Thror lies with his head placed on his chest.

Dis stares at it as the Memory-Keeper ends his song and throws the torch onto their bodies. The flesh melts off the bones and the skin crackles. The stench fills the air. Mizimel stands as the wind changes and blows the smoke into her face. Her eyes water. Dis stands behind her, looking at her mother, tall and stoic and immobile and seemingly emotionless. The smoke makes her cough. She turns away, covers her mouth, tries not to retch. When she looks up, she sees Dwalin hold Balin and vice versa in front of a still fuming pyre. Their father and mother have just finished burning.

They are the only ones left.

 


End file.
